YET ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING OF INNOCENT CHILDREN
By Vincent Lyn
Last night I was attending the Gala for Child Protection International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children. One million children go missing every year.
We took a moment of silence for the 19 children and two teachers from Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas who were brutally murdered. Apparently the shooter used so much firepower that the children are unrecognizable. Law enforcement is having to collect DNA samples from parents to identify them.
A lot has been said about gun control in America. In the wake of the recent mass shooting at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket that killed ten people the deadliest mass shooting of the year in the United States until yesterdays school massacre. There have been 27 school shootings with injuries or deaths this year.
The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, has counted 212 mass shootings that have occurred so far this year, as of Tuesday. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter.
It’s utter madness that living in America has become a war zone within its own borders where you can no longer feel safe to go to the supermarket or children cannot feel safe and parents have to wonder if it will be their child that gets killed in school today. Families dropping their kids off at school where you believe they’re safe and learning, to then never see them again.
People Demand Action - politicians need to implement sensible gun control laws. All this bullshit rhetoric — more security is needed in schools, arm the teachers, padlock the schools. Really? The politicians who bow down to the NRA have blood on their hands and should be held responsible. But they will do nothing because they would rather stay in power and not stand up to the NRA gun-toting idiots. It makes me livid and sick to my stomach. Our leaders care nothing about our children. After the Sandy Hook school massacre we said never again. A lot could have been done but nothing was done. Our children have become expendable, cannon fodder. Politicians only care about keeping their jobs than doing the right thing. We have a society with all the elements of mental illness. A psychosis of insanity. There is no accountability. No Logic. Just Hate and the means to inflict hatred on innocent children. Our children now have everything to worry about let alone the nightmare for parents to fear, because we as a society cannot protect them. We have to demand our leaders actually do something this time. And if they do not, vote those out who do nothing. And as much as I along with all of my colleagues agree, sadly will anything really change?
More will be said but nothing will be done: the President will go on TV to condemn the killings and offer his condolences to the bereaved and the parents will bury and mourn the innocent children until the next time. And there will be a next time and another next time ad infinitum until all the guns are taken off the people.
U.S population is 333 million and of the 393 million firearms in the U.S., only 6.06 million of them are registered. According to the Pew Research Center, handguns are the most common type of firearm among gun owners. About 39% of men and 22% of women say they own a firearm.
American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the U.S. military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement. Americans bought more than 2 million guns in May 2018, more than twice the total number of arms possessed by law enforcement agencies in the United States combined.
More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020 than in any other year on record, according to recently published statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included a record number of gun murders, as well as a near-record number of gun suicides. Despite the increase in such fatalities, the rate of gun deaths — a statistic that accounts for the nation’s growing population — remains below the levels of earlier years.
In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. That figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three other, less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were unintentional, those that involved law enforcement and those whose circumstances could not be determined. The total excludes deaths in which gunshot injuries played a contributing, but not principal, role.
The 45,222 total gun deaths in 2020 were by far the most on record, representing a 14% increase from the year before, a 25% increase from five years earlier and a 43% increase from a decade prior. Gun murders, in particular, have climbed sharply in recent years. The 19,384 gun murders that took place in 2020 were the most since at least 1968, exceeding the previous peak of 18,253 recorded by the CDC in 1993. The 2020 total represented a 34% increase from the year before, a 49% increase over five years and a 75% increase over 10 years. The number of gun suicides has also risen in recent years — climbing 10% over five years and 25% over 10 years — and is near its highest point on record. The 24,292 gun suicides that took place in 2020 were the most in any year except 2018, when there were 24,432.
The statistics speak for themselves!
Firearms ownership should be limited to the security services who need them to maintain law and order: when you have a third of the population running around with firearms it complicates things; everybody becomes a potential target as everybody is a potential murderer.
You can’t have your cake and eat it: if Americans want to carry guns, people will die — sometimes en masse!
Vincent Lyn
CEO/Founder at We Can Save Children
International Human Rights Commission
Director of Creative Development at African Views Organization
Economic & Social Council at United Nations
Editor in Chief at Wall Street News Agency
Rescue & Recovery Specialist at International Confederation of Police & Security Experts